As Numbers Add Up, Rutgers Coach Has Renewed Sense of Urgency

Coach C. Vivian Stringer took Rutgers to the women’s Final Four in 2007, where the Lady Knights lost to Tennessee in the final.Credit
Suzy Allman for The New York Times

In 1990, when C. Vivian Stringer was coaching at Iowa, she received in the mail what she described as a gold letter with a diamond on it from the university congratulating her for her 300th win.

“I thought, what’s this for?” Stringer said. She had been so focused on winning daily that she had overlooked her totals.

Today, on the doorstep of another milestone, with 899 wins, Stringer has reached a level of success too rarefied to ignore. With a victory at DePaul on Tuesday, Stringer would join three other women’s Division I coaches to reach that mark.

Not much else has changed over the years, though. Winning every day remains Stringer’s soul-burning objective — particularly this season, with an 11th straight N.C.A.A. tournament berth for her team in jeopardy.

At 64, Stringer seems as hungry as when she started, in 1971, coaching basketball, volleyball and soccer at Cheyney State, a historically black college outside Philadelphia. She spoke of the struggle getting her current young team — there are nine underclassmen — to invoke their passion the same way it burns in her.

“Sometimes they don’t even know what they don’t know,” she said, her soft voice rising. “They mean well. I thoroughly enjoy working with them; they’re great. But sometimes I wonder — Do they even know? Do they even know? And what’s it going to take for them to know?

“I’m looking at this group and thinking, do they really know what’s in jeopardy?” Stringer added. “I talk about our sense of urgency. Sometimes I wonder. I think they think we’ll just turn it on.”

With one victory, Stringer would join two retired coaches, Pat Summitt of Tennessee and Jody Conradt of Texas, and the active Sylvia Hatchell of North Carolina with 900 wins or more. Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim and Bobby Knight are the only men to do it.

But at 14-8, tied for sixth place in the Big East at 5-4, Rutgers has an unsettling status this season. The program went to the last 16 every year between 2005 and 2009, including a losing trip to the N.C.A.A. title game in 2007. This season, Rutgers is 13th in the conference in scoring and last among the 15 teams in 3-point shooting and free-throw percentage.

Attendance has fallen steadily off its peak of 4,740 a game in the 2007-8 season. There have been grumblings that Rutgers might soon look for a change after Stringer’s contract expires in 2014.

Rutgers has had the No. 3-rated recruiting class in the nation two years in a row, according to ESPN’s scouting site, HoopGurlz, including two McDonald’s All-Americans.

“The caliber of player isn’t an issue,” said Rosalyn Gold-Onwude, an ESPN analyst. But she pointed to the rise of other talented programs that recruit heavily in New York City, like Syracuse, West Virginia, St. John’s and even Fordham, which is in the midst of a resurgent season.

“It’s not a one or two or three-coach picking pool for East Coast players anymore,” Gold-Onwude said.

Carlene Mitchell, a Rutgers assistant under Stringer from 2002 to 2011, said the demands on the program were nearly impossible to consistently satisfy after all the success the team has had over the years.

“What’s enough to make everyone content?” said Mitchell, now the coach at U.C. Santa Barbara. “Is it every year playing in a national championship game? Is it elite eight? The standards she had set are so high, how do you stay there every year?”

On the court, Mitchell soaked in Stringer’s brilliance as a defensive tactician — her trademark 55 full-court press is stitched to her winning legacy — while marveling at her tirelessness.

“She has more energy than I have,” Mitchell said, “and I’m half her age.”

Stringer said coaching had not become any easier, but had remained as much fun. She revels in the prepractice planning. Lately, the wins have been harder to come by. But she has not lost the thrill of attaining all 899.

“It’s kind of poetic that this year probably reflects an accumulation of every year over the years, the struggles, the good, the bad,” Stringer said. “I’m so frustrated with them at times, but then I’m so happy and elated because I’ve watched them grow.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 12, 2013, on Page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: As Numbers Add Up, Rutgers Coach Has Renewed Sense of Urgency. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe